


That Bring the Fog and Mist

by nechromatize



Category: Avengers (Comic), Captain America, Captain America (2011), Captain America (Comics), Iron Man (Comic), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel 616, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Age of Sail, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M, Pirates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-26
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-02 13:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nechromatize/pseuds/nechromatize
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1674. Spain’s grip on the Caribbean is crumbling, and the West Indies are ruled with molasses, piracy and rum. In the struggle for the New World, Steve Rogers is ruled by a Hell he left behind, and the man he left behind in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Bring the Fog and Mist

_HMS Resolution out of Bridgetown_

_80 miles South-southwest of Barbados_

1674

 

 

Water sluiced the deck as the Spanish ship rolled, her nose pitched low into the swell as the sea caught her one way, the wind the other. Salt water was flooding in beneath the guns, cresting the rails to soak the lanterns in stinging sheets. Lieutenant Steven Rogers spared the mast a tense look, catching a lunge across his side in a rough parry. Every sailor of the _San Martín_ was pitched into battle against them, leaving her wild to toss them about on the yawning deck. The grappling hooks were stretching and twisting between her and the _Resolution_ , and the sickening sound of bending iron cut through the fighting. Steven reversed the spent pistol in his hand, slamming it up beneath the man’s jaw. One good heave cast him off, and back down the ladder to the wreathing quarterdeck. With any luck -- any damn luck at all -- the fall would wind him soundly; the sword in Steven’s hand was already sticky, gluing the hot spaces between his fingers and sliding along the rope rail as, breathing hard, he half jumped after him. They were carrying the day with numbers, but they were losing too many men to do it; the number of corpses was growing deep to his shins, and the Spanish should have struck their colors _long_ before now, had they any sense. But the fighting was being pushed back from the wheelhouse, steadily, and the captain’s cabin behind it swung from light to dark as the lamp inside hitched with the wind, glowing out from behind frosted, wet windows.

The doors were locked when he finally fought his way to them, the small brass mechanism giving bluntly beneath the shot of his last loaded pistol. Without looking back, Steven ducked inside out of the rain. The gloom muted the sound of battle, leaving him free to hear his own breathing in his ears for the first time in an hour. The Spanish words of quarter were rolling around tersely in his head, along with a grim desire to see this finished growing grimmer by the minute. He could see a body slumped by the run-in cannon, captain’s coat still visible and the hat spilled off. From the whistle of wind and the punch in the hull, a cannonball's splinters had shot him through.

_And there has gone the quickest chance of surrender._

In the swinging light he might have missed him. The man was stock still by the stern windows, and it was only the shift of shadow and battle instinct ( _too short for a sword, not bright enough for a dirk_ ) that had Steven down behind the cannon, landed across the stiff, blood-sodden legs. The shot went off with a coughing crunch of metal on metal, and Steven groped for the dead man’s gun, no time to reload his own. (He would apologize later for the necessity of breaking three fingers to free it.) It was primed, thank God, and the stern window squealed open as he made his feet, cocked, fired. The man crumpled back in a cascade of paper, his arm over his ribs; it was all the time Steven needed to close the space, not quite dodging the sudden, vicious kick that damn near took his knee-cap out from under him. He aimed a dirty punch, blunt and brutal, to the same ribs he’d just cracked with lead. Steven set his jaw at the cry it elicited, bearing down with all the weight of his body and hammered in a second. It was enough to take the man down to his knees as the lamp swung back in their direction. The code ledgers and documents were spilled out beneath their feet—they should have been dropped overboard at the first sign of boarding, but the good fortune stumbled as Steve fisted a hand in the man’s collar, about to line him up for a last blow. Before his struggling could produce another pistol, or knife, or worse.

About to, before he took the furious glower full on, and watched it freeze with shock. Shock he was slow to recognize, but not to taste, in his own mouth. When it came, it was sharper than the burn of the pistol smoke. Tight, pained fingers caught him around the forearm and Steven’s stomach turned violently.

“What—” he began.

“Sink them,” Anthony bit out, moment over. He’d left off holding himself upright, leaving it to Steven’s painful grip to scrabble his bloody fingers frantically through the papers, trying to gather them up. Steven had to let him down slowly, collapsing the injured man to the ground while he continued to grope and grab as though he were not bleeding over everything.

“To _Hell_ with them. Hold still,” Steve snapped, his mind awash as he belted his pistol and reached for the bloody shirt. But Anthony slapped him sharply aside.

“Help me or move! Better—” he paused to gasp, grasping his ribs tighter, “—throw us both over. You’ve already shot me.”

The fairness of that accusation was untenable. “Because you missed,” Steven found himself retorting, smartly, but the blood was slipping over his fingers, hot and dark. He reached again and Antony twisted full away from him, the sound of reinforcements outside the door making his hands fly. There wasn’t much time. It was the panicked, trapped sound and the man’s bared teeth that decided him. (It was selfish, it was stunned and unthinking and _good God, Tony_ ). The papers, blood already soaking in at the corners, went out of the open window into the waves as fast as he could wrench them out of Anthony’s hands. The man watched them go, making _sure_ to the last with an intensity bright with pain. Then he slumped, relieved, against his legs all at once. Steven should have let him stay there, had he not needed even more pressingly to get back across the room. He needed the coat and the hat, and he needed them before his men arrived.

::

A bloody marine, eye flinched closed, flattened himself against the hammocks as they stumbled past. Against his ribs Steven could feel the beleaguered shake of bloody laughter, and tightened his grip until the other man gasped; fought him only weakly across the tacky floor and through the _Resolution’s_ crowded orlop.

“Mr Foster!” He had to yell over the sounds of the wounded, the gagged sound of men sourcing bravery between the rolled-up rope of shirt and leather. A fresh bale of water went over the surgeon’s table, and Steven lifted Tony up against his objections, helped by one of the surgeon’s boys. _“Mr Foster.”_ Fingers were catching at his wrist, clever, familiar fingers, and Steven flattened them out against the splintered wood with his own.

_Not here._

_I’m here._

“Here, here, for crying out loud.” The push and shove of injured bodies resolved into the grisly apron of the surgeon, the man smeared pink with gore to his elbows.

Steven rounded on him, feeling the guilty weight of each braid on his coat. “The Spanish captain,” he said, as evenly as he could. “A pistol shot to the side.” The fingers dug in under his, and Steve looked down into the same dark, sarcastic eyes. The lines were tight around the mouth with blood-loss and mirth, _I’m…the captain now?_ in the shape of his lips. The shape of his lips in _English_.

“Laudanum,” Steve ordered to one of the other boys; watched Anthony’s eyes cloud, and his teeth bare as Steve leaned down close, almost crushing the tense fingers under his own. “Spanish,” he reminded him, with the weight of an order he had long since forfeited the right to give. But nonetheless, it _was_ an order.

Tony’s hand caught at his belt for purchase against the pain, and Steve shifted to hold him by the shoulders as the boy doused the rag. The years between them dissolved as it went over the man’s face without a fight – that was, until the panicked fist caught Steven in the gut, and they all needed to pile down hard just to hold him.

When it was done; when the straps were tight, and the surgeon was re-whetting a better knife, Steve tried to let his head catch up with the trembling of his hands. Anthony’s wound was drying and clotting over with fresh blood, contained by the pressure the boy was putting on it. No-one paid him any attention as Steven made quick work of the braided shirt, salt-stiff and powder-burnt. He was already sure, but it would need to come off just the same; in doing so he could slide his fingers between the ties, pushing the folds aside until he reached the heat of skin. The round scar ridged up to meet him as he did, puckered and wide. Steve pressed his hand flat for a moment.

“Sir,” someone shouted from the bottom of the ladder. “Lieutenant, the prize crew is aboard. They’re cutting the lines. The Captain wants you on deck.”

“Very good, Mr Bradley.”

Steven slid his hand back, forcing himself to step away as the surgeon came on. These were all his men, slumped and bleeding around him, and he could not bring himself to tell Foster _this one first, if no-one else_. He owed the men that much and more; they had followed his orders these past years, and they had laid down their lives and those of their comrades, often at his command. The lie he had already told would say it all for him, anyway, and he would have to live with it when the time came to bury the cost.

He only hoped he still had cause to pay it gladly.


End file.
